Weather dept plans push for citizens to chip in with weather tips

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) will soon launch a social media campaign to nudge people to contribute to crowdsourcing data portal in order to get more inputs from the public on weather events such as hail, thundershowers and gusty winds, and ground impact such as damage to buildings, trees and waterlogging.

This, it said, can be utilised for more granular maps and issue impact-based warnings, such as which locations are more likely to be waterlogged during rain.

The IMD had last year issued a link to allow people to report on weather events in their area. Met officials said that in March, just over 300 inputs were received through its website https://mausam.imd.gov.in/, where a ‘public observation’ section has been created.

Out of these, 16 were inputs from Delhi, with people reporting hail, dust storm, thunderstorm and lightning in their area.

Officials say they are now looking to draw more submissions from the public by promoting the link through social media.

“While existing stations in Delhi may not capture rain or hail, this crowdsourcing data allows us to know which areas other than the existing stations received rain. This can allow us to create a map of sorts where we can identify which locations received in Delhi beyond the current stations. We can also depict hail activity, which is a very localized phenomenon in several cases.” said a met official, stating greater the number of inputs, greater are the chances of the data being utilised for future forecasts.

Kuldeep Srivastava, scientist at IMD said crowdsourcing data becomes even more important in the months of March till June, when thunderstorms are quite common as high moisture and high temperature can lead to the formation of clouds within a matter of hours.

Crowdsourcing data helped Delhi find out that hail was recorded in east Delhi on March 31, despite no weather station in the capital recording hail.